Understanding Adobe Illustrator's Grid System

Adobe
Illustrator is today by far the most popular vector software out
there. As complex and elaborate as it might seem at first, it doesn’t take you
long to tinker with it and figure out what most of its buttons and options do.

Still, some
functions and settings are usually overlooked by those who are just starting to
grasp it, which is why I’m going to share with you something that I wish somebody
had showed me when I first started out using it.

Yes, I’m talking
about the Grid system.

What Is the
Grid?

As with any
learning curve, the first thing we need to ask ourselves is what is the actual
meaning of the word?

According to the
Merriam-Webster online dictionary, a grid is defined as “a network of uniformly
spaced horizontal and perpendicular lines (as for locating points on a map)” .

An even more
refined definition can be found over at Wikipedia,
where the grid is explained in the context of graphic design:
“a grid is a structure (usually two-dimensional) made up of a
series of intersecting straight (vertical, horizontal, and angular) or curved
guide lines used to structure content. The grid serves as an armature on which
a designer can organize graphic elements
(images, glyphs, paragraphs) in a rational, easy to absorb manner. A
grid can be used to organize graphic elements in relation to a page, in
relation to other graphic elements on the page, or relation to other parts of
the same graphic element or shape.”

It’s worth mentioning that Illustrator’s Grid is
made up of only straight vertical and horizontal lines. If you want to set up
curved or more complex grids, you will have to rely on creating them using
guidelines, which are fairly easy to use.

Why Is the Grid Important?

Probably at this point you have a basic idea of what a grid is. But why
should you care or even use it? Well, if you want to create something that has
balance in terms of the way the visual elements complete one another through
their positioning, grids are the way to go. They offer you guidance on how to
relate one object to another, and most importantly how to structure elements on
the artboard.

Beyond that, the Grid helps designers create pixel perfect artwork for
digital devices (which in my opinion is a must), but more on that in a couple
of moments.

Before I can expand on the importance of using
the Grid to create sharp artwork, I need to talk briefly about some key aspects
of the way images are constructed on the two different media (screen and
print).

Digital vs. Print

As you probably already know, the digital medium differs a lot from the
printed one. Each of them has different color modes (RGB vs. CMYK), and each one
can output different resolutions (screen resolution vs. print resolution). What
makes them even more different is the way they render images, and most
importantly the way they handle curved lines.

A computer monitor is pixel grid dependent
(squared pixels tiled to one another), meaning it will handle curvatures by
adding transparent pixels (alpha channels) on the sides, a process called anti-aliasing,
which in the end mimics the natural straight line one would draw on a piece of
paper for example.

A printer is dependent only on the paper size
and the dpi (dots per inch) you set the image to, meaning it will print out the
curvatures perfectly (with the condition that you set the dpi to a high value).
This is because printing is based on layering color dots one by one without the
need for adding the semitransparent values that screen devices use to create the illusion of a smooth curve.

To Snap or Not
to Snap?

Well, this is
probably the best question one might ask. Through the process of snapping, you
instruct Illustrator to align each object on the artboard to the grid / pixel
grid.

Remember I told
you a few lines ago that the Grid helps us create pixel perfect illustrations? Now that you know how digital handles images compared to print, it’s time to
elaborate more on the most important role that I think the Grid has.

I am almost
certain that you’ve seen some illustrations on Dribbble or Behance with super-sharp lines, and always wondered how the designer pulled that off. Well wonder
no more: he or she simply made sure to align everything to the pixel grid, creating
every element with whole values.

By whole values I mean values that do not have decimal places, so for example we have a rectangle with a 200 px width and
a height of 100 px, and not something like 200.84 px by 99.80 px.

The Grid
Extended

Because I
believe that examples speak more than words, I will explain all you need to do
in order to get the Grid right by showing you a step by step preparing process
that you can rely on every time you create something in Illustrator.

Step 1

As with any new project, the first thing we always
set up is the document. Open up Illustrator and create a test document with the
following values:

Number of Artboards: 1

Width:
800 px

Height:
800 px

Units:
pixels

And from the Advanced tab:

Color Mode:
RGB

Raster Effects:
300 ppi

Align New Objects to
Pixel Grid: checked

Quick note:
you might have noticed I set the Raster Effects to 300 ppi, when the document is
intended for screen use. Well, setting the Rasters to higher ppi values will
have no visible effect on the screen, but if for some reason you need to print
out what you designed (even though you created it using RGB color values) any drop
shadows, inner shadows, and other effects will get messed up if they are
printed at a lower ppi value than 300.

You can always modify the ppi of a document, no
matter the initial setting, by going to Effect
> Document Raster Effects Settings and giving it the desired value.

Step 2

Once you have the document set up, create a 100 x 100 px black square and position
it towards the top left corner of the Artboard
using the Align panel.

Step 3

In order to understand how the Grid works you
must first see it. Go to View > Show
Grid(Control-") and
immediately you should see the default 1000 x 4 Grid that Illustrator comes set
up with.

Step 4

Now that we see
it, how does it actually work? First I want you to select and move the little
square with the help of your keyboard’s directional arrows and see how
it behaves.

You might notice
that our little object jumped a few pixels here and there but nothing easily
observable. This is because we haven’t enabled the Snap to Grid option.

Position the square to its original location,
and then go to View > Snap to Grid
(Shift-Control-Y), and again, try to move the object to the right.

Now clearly we
can see a difference. If you move it one more time to the right you start
observing a pattern. Each time the square jumps, it does so by snapping to one
of the sides of the little squares created by the horizontal and vertical lines
that form our Grid.

Let’s see why Illustrator behaves that
why, by explaining how Illustrator creates the Grid itself. As I’ve already
mentioned, the default settings that are configured in the software are:

Because our Artboard has only 800 x 800 px ( three 250 px squares plus another smaller 50 px section highlighted with green)it will snap towards the left and top
side of one of the Grid’s 1000 x 1000 px
squares, leaving the right and lower sections of the Grid space unoccupied (200 px highlighted with red).

Now going back to our little black square, the
reason why it jumps all the way to the sides of the 250 x 250 px square is because it has only 100 x 100 px, and as it did with the Artboard, Illustrator forces it
to snap to the delimiting lines. If the black object had been exactly 250 x 250 px, it would have occupied the
entire surface of one of the Grid’s square, and would have jumped exactly one
out of the sixteen inner positions.

Adjusting the
Grid Settings

I hope that the last step managed to shed light on how the Grid works, but you must understand that
each project you create might require setting up different Grids depending on
the size of your Artboard, and the accuracy with which you want to position
your elements onto it.

I’ve found that using the smallest possible
settings will give me the most accurate results, and by combining the power of
the Grid with Pathfinder I am able
to position my elements quickly and intuitively.

My Grid settings:

Gridline every:
1 px

Subdivisions: 1

If you want to experiment or simply use the
settings I have you, all you need to do is go to Edit > Preferences > Guides & Grid and modify them as you
desire.

Rapid
Prototyping Using the Grid

Let’s try a
short exercise and see how we can create a quick website wireframe using a Grid
with Gridlines every 800 px and a
subdivision of 4, on the same 800 x 800 px Artboard.

Yes I know the default width of today’s basic
website is 960 px, but I wanted to show you a quick example of how easy it is
to position things using custom Grid settings.

Step 1

Create an 800
x 200 px rectangle and position it towards the top of our Artboard, coloring
it using #191919. Grab the Type Tool and
label this section as our website’s Header.

Quick tip:if
you have elements that are smaller and don’t actually need to be snapped to the
Grid, in our case the section labels, simply select those elements and then go
to the View menu and deselect Snap to Grid.

Step 2

Create a smaller 600 x 400 px rectangle, color it using a darker tint (#3D3D3D) and
then position it using the directional keys to the left of the Artboard, just
under the header. Make sure to label this section of the website as the
Content.

Step 3

Create an even smaller 200 x 400 px object, color it using #B24747, and then position it to
the right side of the content, making sure to label it as the Sidebar.

Step 4

Finish up our little wireframe by adding another
800 x 200 px rectangle (#191919) to
the bottom of our Artboard, labeling it as our Footer.

In a manner of
just a few seconds we managed to create a rudimentary website. Imagine if
we had spent more time playing with it.

The Snap to
Duality

Before I let you
experiment with custom Grids on your own, I wanted to talk to you about the
main differences between the Snap to
Grid and Snap to Pixel options.

By default, when
you set up a New Document, the Preview Mode is usually set on Default. That
means that what you design is basically what you see (you see the vector as it
is and not in pixel format). In this case the Snap to option will be set to the Grid, and depending on the values you assign to it, it will snap to
one of the little squares that form it.

If you enable Pixel Preview (View > Pixel
Preview) and zoom in on the Artboard,Illustrator will reveal the actual pixels that form your vector elements.
Once the snapping is set to Pixel, each
movement made on the Artboard will be by exactly the number of pixels you’ve
set your Keyboard Increment to, in
the direction you pushed it to.

Quick tip:Yes you can set a default
Increment for the precision with which you move objects around your Artboard.
The option can be found going to Edit
> Preferences > General > Keyboard Increment.

The key
difference between these two snapping methods is that if you’ve somehow created
an object that has pixels with decimal places, for example a rectangle of 200.9 x 60.40 px, snapping it to the Pixel Grid will force it to change its
dimensions to whole values, thus creating a sharper object.

I recommend that once you’ve created something
using the Snap to Grid option, you
should always switch to Pixel Preview mode
and see if they align correctly to the Pixel Grid so that you can make sure your
artwork will end up looking as crisp as possible.